This post is an update on an event and a process that began when I photographed this Vesper Sparrow as it bathed in a small Montana spring earlier this fall.
There’s just something about back-brooding birds that appeals to the human eye and heart.
This female Osprey seemed stiff and less confident of her agility immediately after being relieved from many hours of nesting duty.
I believe this juvenile Swainson’s Hawk was taken by surprise by what it found in its mouth.
In a recent post I documented “play” in Northern Harriers. Two days ago I photographed two of them playing – with each other and with “toys”.
Raptors sometimes pull some pretty crazy maneuvers during take-off (the last 9 images in this post are sequential with no images in the sequence left out).
Last month I posted a few images of this Merlin in the fog. For subtle reasons this may be my favorite from the entire session with the bird.
Pied-billed Grebes use several different diving techniques but the one called “gradual sinking” is certainly the most entertaining to watch.
Play has been well documented in some bird species and I believe I photographed that behavior in a Northern Harrier this week. This bird was too far away for quality images but I think the behavior is well documented in the photographs. I first spotted this hawk on an ugly metal fence post but as soon as I stopped my pickup to watch it through my lens the wary bird took off. Almost immediately it performed a spectacular and classic harrier mid-air maneuver by changing directions and pouncing on something in the grasses. I presumed it to be a vole. For about two minutes the bird continually struggled, wrestled and pounced on something I couldn’t see. The activity was quite frenetic and I took many photos of it. As I watched through my lens I wondered if the harrier was trying to avoid being bitten by a vole or even a larger rodent. Eventually the harrier took off with its “prey”, which turned out to be dried cow poop. Cow pies are common in this area because refuge managers run cattle there in the summer in an attempt to control invasive phragmites (personally I’m not a fan of cattle on public lands but that’s another story…). The harrier carried the cow pie only a few feet… before dropping it. Whether that was done deliberately or not I don’t know but I suspect that it was because in the image just before this one (just as the pie…
I have never seen any species of bird nesting as late as the second week in October in northern Utah. Until yesterday.
I photographed this adult White-crowned Sparrow near a campground at Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge last month as it tried to feed on berries in a stiff breeze.
Sometimes when I’m photographing birds I find myself wondering “Why did that bird do that?”. Arriving at a reliable answer can be an exercise in frustration but often I can’t help myself, even when the behavior in question is a trivial one.
This lonely fir tree at the east end of Montana’s Centennial Valley has had some interesting history over the last several years.
Vesper Sparrows are “dust bathers”. They do it so often that they’re known for having puffs of dust fly off of them when they’re flushed and take off. In fact, Birds of North America Online says they’re “not observed to bathe in water”. This Vesper Sparrow didn’t read the book.
